


Darkness

by JayceCarter



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Anger, F/M, Hate Sex, Mentions of Suicide, Sad, Spoilers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:53:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayceCarter/pseuds/JayceCarter
Summary: Arthur loves Nora, but after he does something unforgivable, he knows she'll never feel the same. Still, when she comes to his quarters late at night, he's not about to turn her away.





	Darkness

Elders didn’t have regrets. Maxsons didn’t dwell on the past. They did what was required of them, always.

 

Arthur repeated these things in his head as he laid in his dark quarters. Only a few hours remained from the sun rising and he had not managed any sleep despite the sting of his eyes and the weariness of his body.

 

Some types of exhaustion rest couldn’t fix, though.

 

His door opened, and he reached for the pistol he kept beside the bed.

 

The shadow had him easing back and releasing the weapon. There was only one girl on the Prydwen that small, only one who would dare enter his quarters without so much as a knock.

 

Nora said nothing after sliding in through the cracked door. She closed it just as softly. Had he been asleep, she’d have never woken him.

 

Her silhouette moved through the room, silent and slow, barely visible in the darkness, the line of light from beneath the door the only aid.

 

A soft sigh and she crawled into the bed with him. She set her head on his shoulder, her arm thrown around him. Wetness from her cheek smeared on his arm.

 

“I miss him,” she whispered.

 

He curled his arm around her, pulling her tighter against him, as if she could warm him. Had he always been this damned cold? This empty? Or did it just not hurt until now?

 

They’d never done this before, never been anything but professional, proper. Maybe the day had torn away walls they both had put up. Besides, despite anything that might have been between them, her relationship with the former Paladin was not a closely-held secret. Arthur was many things, not all of them good, but he wasn’t the sort to get between two people he’d always considered friends.

 

“We did what we had to,” he said as if he could convince her, and thus himself. He kept his voice strong, though quiet. Loudness had no place in the darkness.

 

“Did we? We let a man who gave everything he had for us kill himself.”

 

It killed him. In the silent solitude of his mind he could admit, he’d had a plan. He always had plans. Send Nora to kill Danse, and she’d find a way to fix it. She would never kill Danse, would refuse, which was why he’d sent her.

 

Leave it to the damned Paladin to have more nobility than he’d expected, to take matters into his own hands.

 

Arthur had walked into the bunker, expecting to find them alive, to give Danse a chance to run. Arthur would scowl and bluster, but one tiny push and he’d relent. Bare his teeth, but give in. That was his plan. Instead, he’d found Nora curled over Danse’s corpse, a gun in Danse’s hand and a hole in the paladin’s head.

 

Danse always was the better man.

 

“The Brotherhood-“

 

“-fuck the Brotherhood, and fuck you, too.”

 

He sighed, hand rubbing over her arm. “Then why are you here? You miss him, but there are friendlier beds you could have climbed into for comfort than mine. Beds full of less unresolved issues.”

 

She rolled, leg slinging over him to straddle his hips. Her hands gripped the sides of his head, nails biting into him. “You don’t get to take Danse away from me and then walk away like nothing happened! You don’t get to steal him from me and expect me to fall apart somewhere else, somewhere more convenient, you son of a bitch!”

 

He didn’t retaliate, kept his voice low, calm. “I’m not trying to send you anywhere else. If I were, I’d have kicked you out as soon as you walked in here.”

 

The darkness in the room made her only an outline, only something darker than the rest of the night. It meant he couldn’t read her face, her expression, but did he need to?

 

He knew what was there: hatred. Anger. Betrayal.

 

And she was right. He did what he had to do, but that didn’t absolve him, didn’t make it better.

 

Danse was gone because of his order. Nora was devastated because of him. And yet, no matter how much it killed him, he knew he would make the same choice again.

 

He knew why she was there, even if she didn’t, even if she refused to admit it. When she reached between them, fingers curling into the waistband of his underwear, nails scratching his skin, it didn’t surprise him.

 

She pulled them off, shifting her weight until she could get the fabric off his legs.

 

Arthur didn’t stop her, but neither did he help. She settled over him again, and bare skin met him. She’d either come in wearing only a shirt or removed her underwear without him noticing.

 

Her hand, small and warm and soft, wrapped around his cock. He’d always liked her hands, how delicate they seemed. Another hand pressed to the center of his chest, fingers curled so nails dug into him, and then warmth enveloped his cock.

 

She took him in a single motion, and the whine from her throat said pleasure was not what she got. What did she want? Did she want to hurt? To punish herself, to use him because he caused it all?

 

He didn’t know, so he gave himself to her. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, he’d do.

 

She rode him hard, and he detected no signs of pleasure. She didn’t moan and writhe. She didn’t squeeze around him. It was none of the things he’d thought about those times when he’d given himself to fantasies.

 

The light revealed a shaking of her shoulders just before a soft gasp fell from her lips. Another joined the first, until she broke above him.

 

Arthur reached for her, wanted to wipe away the tears he knew he’d find on her cheeks. He wanted to pull her against him and apologize, and tell her he loved her, had always loved her, that he’d fix this somehow.

 

Before he could reach her, Nora shoved his hands away. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to be the good guy in this.”

 

He’d had enough. His hands snapped forward, wrapping in her hair, pulling her down toward him so his soft voice carried. “Why are you here, Nora? You don’t want me, it’s obvious, and I can’t blame you for that. So why are you here?”

 

She cracked open, the hitch of her sobs so loud in the room, he’d have sworn her chest broke open. “He’s gone and it’s all your fault. I was laying there in his bed, in the bed we shared, and he’s never coming back. He’d never going to walk through that door and smile at me, and he’s never going to scold me again, and he’s never going to wrap his arms around me and hold me. And I’m so angry and I don’t have anyone to take it out on but you.” She dropped her forehead against his shoulder.

 

“And you think sex will make any of that better?”

 

His shoulder muffled her response. “I think I don’t care.”

 

He released her hair and wrapped his arms around her, clutching her to his chest. Some pathetic part of him soaked up the touch of her body against his, willing to pretend anything if it meant keeping this. “Do you want to stop?”

 

She shook her head but didn’t move. “This-“ she shifted her hips “-is all I can feel. I don’t know if there’s anything else left. It’s like Danse took everything else from me when he. . .”  Another choked sob stopped her words.

 

He rolled them so he was above her.

 

Her thighs didn’t squeeze around his hips, didn’t lift for more, didn’t do anything but fall open. She was as lifeless as Danse had been in that bunker.

 

Arthur pressed his forehead to hers as he took her slow, much slower than she’d gone. She wanted pain, but he can’t bring himself to hurt her. He’d done enough of that already.

 

Neither of them came. Neither tried to.

 

This night wasn’t about love or orgasms or sweat. It wasn’t about passion or need. This was Nora hurting him the only way she knew how.

 

And so Arthur loved her the only way he knew how, offering kisses she never returned. He didn’t touch her, didn’t try to pull anything from her. He’d taken too much from her.

 

She didn’t reach for him, didn’t cling to him, didn’t want him.

 

They ended up moving in the bed at some point, facing each other, her hands over her face like she could hide from the day, from the night.

 

When the light crept in from the hallway, when the footsteps of soldiers signaled early morning, she rose.

 

She sat at the edges of the bed, head dropped forward into her hands. “I miss him.”

 

Arthur leaned up, weight propped up on his elbow. “I do, too.”

 

“I hate you,” she whispered it, and he knew it was true.

 

He answered with the truth as well, the truth he wasn’t supposed to say, the one he’d only have dared in the dark with this woman. “I do, too.”

 


End file.
